


i am heavy (i feel frail)

by bughead (orphan_account)



Category: Little Mix (Band)
Genre: Anorexia, Binge Eating Disorder, Eating Disorders, Leigh has an eating disorder, Mental Health Issues, references to zerrie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-30
Updated: 2017-03-30
Packaged: 2018-10-12 21:00:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10499385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/bughead
Summary: When she stood up, and the blood disappeared from her head, it felt like being high. She loved the way she had to brace the wall and the way her sight almost completely blacked out. She loved that it meant she was doing something right.orLeigh has an eating disorder.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This small fic honestly means a lot to me. Unbeta'd, so if you see mistakes feel free to point them out. 
> 
> Title and references to lyrics Leigh writes are from Eyesore by Maria Mena

Leigh Anne was always too scared to stick her fingers all the way to the back of her throat. She knew she’d choke, and when she tested it once above her sink, her throat tightening against her fingers scared her too much to continue. Choking was the point, but she just wished it didn’t have to be.

 

She wasn’t too scared to restrict her calories until she was dangerously close to fainting, though. It became second nature, skipping breakfast and lunch and dinner, only eating around other people. Then, she’d cry into her pillow because she had eaten two chicken wings instead of the one she planned on, while trying to fight off an approaching panic attack.

 

When she stood up, and the blood disappeared from her head, it felt like being high. She loved the way she had to brace the wall and the way her sight almost completely blacked out. She loved that it meant she was doing something right.

 

And when she had hours of intense cardio, or dancing to practise for an upcoming performance, or the actual performance itself, it almost felt good that she barely remembered it afterwards, that it was a haze. She could always watch it back later, and honestly it felt better than truly existing in the moment, because then she’d have to confront the fact she was actually living this life, and she knew it only ever lead to a panic attack.

 

It’s better this way. When she doesn’t eat, she loses weight, and feels dizzy all the time, and cold, and that is good. She likes it. It’s life.

  
  


-

  
  


_ The  _ ~~_ugly_ _fat_~~ _ ugly  _ ~~_ tru _ ~~ _ naked truth _

 

“What are you up to, babe?” Jesy says, startling the pen straight out of Leigh’s hand.

 

“Oh my god, Jes, you just gave me a fucking heart attack!” Leigh laughs, reaching the short distance from her chair to the floor to pick up the fallen pen. Her heart is thumping heavily in her chest as she covers the notebook in her lap with her hand. “Just writing some lyrics.”

 

“Anything you need help with?” Jesy sits down at the other end of the grey couch.

 

Leigh’s eyes drift to Jesy’s thighs against her own will, tracking the way they expand after she sits. She thinks Jesy is beautiful, but she doesn’t know what she’d do if her thighs were that size. If they touched.

 

“Uh, no. I don’t think I could write more anyway.” She smiles, carefully closing the notebook. She idly runs her fingers over the worn edges, wondering how the notebook had even lasted so long, and how it hadn’t gotten lost in all the travelling.

 

“Okay, sweetums,” Jesy jokes, “Do you know where Jade is?”

 

“I don’t think so, why?” Leigh’s thumb runs over the corner of the notebook.

 

“Me and Perrie are thinking of getting ice cream. Wanna come?” Jesy invites her almost as an afterthought, as if she hadn’t considered it before.

 

Leigh can’t help the way her eyes flick to Jesy’s thighs. A wave of guilt washes over her, the familiar repulsion immediate. “No, no. I’m good.”

 

“Should’ve known. It’s like you’re allergic to sugar.” Jesy says, standing up. Her legs jiggle a bit as she walks away, and Leigh imagines herself like that.

 

The thing is, Jesy is a goddess. She has beautiful features, a beautiful style and a beautiful body, but when Leigh imagines herself in that body.  _ Well _ . She doesn’t want her thighs to jiggle, or her stomach to protude. It’s so, so not  _ Leigh _ . She’s skinny. It’s who she is. It’s an ugly double standard.

 

If Jesy ever did half the things Leigh does to herself, Leigh wouldn’t hesitate to reassure her of her beauty. But Leigh isn’t Jesy, she wouldn’t look that good, she needs to be thinner. The most thin.

 

No one comes back until just before the show begins, and then they perform, and Leigh feels like she isn’t really there at all, but then she goes back to her room and lies down for an hour and everything feels alright.

  
  


-

  
  


It’s in Kansas City that Leigh discovers she can skip the lunch buffet entirely by going to rehearse her routine in one of the spare rooms, and then telling all the dancers she’s with that she already ate before their practise. 

 

She already skips breakfast under the guise of sleeping in, and she retires to her own private room for ‘dinner’, but she has usually eaten with the girls during the day, now, she doesn’t need to eat at all.

 

Her life gets better and worse after that. She notices she loses an insane amount of weight when she fasts for more than one day at a time, and slowly becomes addicted to that previously unventured level of hunger. Sometimes she’s so hungry to the point she feels sharp jabs in her stomach, so she eats a plum, or some watermelon, or anything she can find less than one hundred calories, and continues.

 

“ _ I’m your biggest fan, I’ll follow you until you love me, pa-pa-parazzi… _ ” Perrie enters the room, singing lightly under her breath. She’s wearing a cropped grey hoodie and matching high-waisted sweatpants. She reaches her hands into the air and does a spin, her torso becoming exposed.

 

Leigh knows, she  _ knows _ she’s thinner than Perrie but, well, she’s also aware she doesn’t look  _ that _ good. She swallows down the bite of the nectarine she was eating and throws the rest into the bin.

 

Perrie leaves the room in a whirlwind, but the image of her torso stains the back of Leigh’s mind. The slight bulge over the rim of her sweatpants was nothing, much like Jesy’s thighs touching. They are both beautiful, and Leigh isn’t lying to herself when she says she’s surrounded by the three most beautiful women on a daily basis.

 

So why doesn’t she look good enough, even when her thighs are centimetres apart, and you can count her ribs through her skin?

  
  


-

  
  


Leigh hasn’t eaten anything for a week. 

 

No one notices.

  
  


-

  
  


There’s no definitive way to measure when an eating disorder begins. You could argue Leigh always had her intense insecurities, when she was on The X Factor all she wanted to do was lose weight so she would be thinner for the cameras, and even after The X Factor she put herself through a grueling exercise regimen, so maybe you could say she always had the mindset.

 

Or maybe it was when Perrie and Zayn split.

 

After their breakup, Leigh became so focused on taking care of Perrie, who was distraught and crying almost all the time, that she only ate two meals in three days without noticing. Still, years later, Leigh doesn’t know why she did it, but when she finally noticed, she weighed herself, and when she saw herself one and a half pounds lighter, she kept going.

 

The thing about the timing was that  _ everyone  _ was so focused on Perrie that no one noticed the change in her diet, and soon enough it just became the norm, and no one expected anything else from her. No one ever asks her if she wants dessert, or seconds, or anything, and no one ever notices that she barely eats at all.

  
  


-

  
  


Leigh dances vigorously on stage, and sings her heart out in a violent haze. After nine days of fasting, she can barely move without feeling dizzy. Right now, she knows her lines are coming up, but everything is sort of blurry, and the lights in the crowd are waving at her.

 

She loves the dizziness, because she hates living in the performance, she hates the faces in the crowd and she hates the pressure of being as good as the other girls, but something isn’t right at all. 

 

It’s  _ Move _ , but she forgets her solo lines and suddenly doesn’t know the choreography even though they’ve been doing this song for years. Her lines are a moment away and all she can think is  _ big baby _ . She’s singing the chorus on autopilot, ready to crash and burn.

 

And at the last second, everything hits her at once; the lyrics, the choreography, the flashing lights, but before she can sing, she feels a hand on her arm, and when she looks up, Perrie is staring at her strangely, and she can hear Jade singing her verse instead.

 

The edges of Leigh’s vision fade into black and white. She can  _ just  _ see a fraction of her olive-green costume but it appears as a dark grey out the corner of her eye. She stares into Perrie’s eyes, a wave of fear suddenly hitting her. It looks like the colours are dancing around in her vision and she knows she’s going to faint.

 

_ If I faint, _ she thinks,  _ they will take me to the hospital. _

 

The end of that thought escapes her as she slumps down into Perrie’s arms, unconscious.

  
  


-

  
  


The first time Leigh wakes up, her eyes feel too heavy to open, and all she can hear is silence. It smells clean, not that she can really distinguish it, and she feels cold. When her eyes finally open, it’s dark, but she can see light edging from underneath a door. She doesn’t move her head but she can see Jesy and Jade wrapped in a blanket, slumped in the corner of the room.

 

_ I fainted,  _ she thinks, and falls back asleep.

 

The next time she wakes up it’s morning and the room is in pandemonium. She can hear footsteps, speech and a continuous buzzing all while moving her eyes under her closed eyelids. She’s fully aware about a minute or two later, and her eyes finally open. 

 

People continue talking, Perrie and Jade are in the corner of the room with Aaron, Claudimar is sitting on a chair bouncing his leg and tapping away at his phone, Andre is standing in the corner, even Jed and Alex are around. 

 

It’s as if everyone notices Leigh is awake, present, at the same time. The room goes silent, and there’s a deep feeling of shame that hits her all at once so intensely she can feel the burn at the back of her throat, the wetness in her eyes.

 

Jade immediately crowds over the bed, tears in her own eyes, “I’m sorry I didn’t know. I should’ve known. I love you.”

 

Jade’s hand grabs for Leigh’s limp, boney wrist and she only cries harder.

 

They all  _ know _ .

  
  


-

  
  


Things change. Leigh goes to an inpatient mental health clinic, silently resenting herself for being the reason Little Mix stops opening for Ariana Grande early, and gets treatment. It works and it doesn’t work, it’s as if now that she’s started eating she can’t stop.

 

She binges up to three and a half thousand calories a day, sometimes, and gains weight rapidly. Her therapist encourages this behaviour, but she hates herself for it more and more everyday.

 

Only a month later you can no longer see her ribs, but she detests that fact. The stress of not being able to stop eating only makes her binge more. The girls are proud that she’s eating, but she knows this isn’t healthy either, so she relapses.

 

Everybody notices.

  
  
  



End file.
